The Economist (UK)

November 13-19, 1999

[for personal use only]

Leader/editorial

Russia's brutal folly

The war in Chechnya is ravaging the Chechens, destabilising the Caucasus and

diminishing Russia. The West must try to help bring it to an end

IT GROWS ever more serious. First, the war in Chechnya is increasingly horrible for the territory's civilians, some 200,000 of whom are now homeless, just before the onset of winter. Second, with Russia's forces advancing on Chechnya's capital, Grozny, and ready soon to launch an all-out attack on it, the death toll among the combatants on both sides looks set to swell. Third, the prospect of the fighting spreading to other parts of the combustible Caucasus is growing. Fourth, and perhaps most worrying, the war is threatening Russia's own rough-hewn democracy: a parliamentary election is due next month, a presidential one next summer, and belligerent Russian generals are sounding insubordinate; some have even been saying they would fight on if the politicians told them to stop. What can outsiders do to help avert a full-blown humanitarian and political catastrophe?

Plainly, the West should try to persuade Russia that a peaceful settlement is in its own interest. A new opportunity to do this presents itself next week at the grand summit in Istanbul of the 54 countries that make up the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an outfit that includes the United States and Russia. In Istanbul, every western bigwig from Bill Clinton down should be impressing upon Russia that it stands only to gain if it now declares a ceasefire and opens talks with Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechens' leader. Had Russia been wise, it would have long since come to terms with him and helped him to fend off the wild men who have made his statelet ungovernable.

Ideally, the Russians should also be persuaded to join an undertaking that would aim to bring peace not just to Chechnya but to the Caucasus as a whole. In the area between the Black and the Caspian Seas lie countless festering issues, including separatist disaffection in two parts of Georgia, a territorial row between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the question of a pipeline to carry oil to the Mediterranean via Turkey. A general conference is the place to discuss these questions.

It has to be recognised, however, that Russia may not be in a mood to listen to the West. For the time being at least, the war is popular in most of Russia. The generals are eager for revenge on the Chechens who humiliated them in the war of 1994-96, and the Kremlin -- or parts of it --is happy to give them their head. So what does the West do then?

For better or worse, Chechnya is a part of Russia. Even so, if the West believed the scale of Russia's brutality to be as great as, say, that of the Serbs in Kosovo, it should - it might be arguedó - issue ultimatums and, if need be, then resort to bombing to drive the Russians out. But that is not a serious prospect. No one wants to risk a war with a nuclear power, especially when the Chechens, however atrociously treated, are hardly model citizens. Russia claims that Chechnya is a base for Islamic terrorists. The claim is plausible, even if the blame may partly lie with the Kremlin, the response is utterly disproportionate and the link between such terrorists and the recent explosions in Russian cities has not been at all convincingly established.

The points of purchase

That does not mean, however, that the West is powerless. It should make it clear that it will suspend most of its co-operation with Russia until it declares a ceasefire in Chechnya, allows international aid agencies full access to the refugees and wounded, and opens a political dialogue with the republic's leadership. Until these conditions are met, the West should not consider offering any further cash loans or food aid through government channels. And the Council of Europe, which purports to embrace only genuine democracies, should suspend Russia's membership.

Meanwhile, the West could be doing much more to strengthen the independence of the countries that sit nervously close to Russia's trembling rim. On November 14th, Ukraine's voters have to decide, in a run-off, between two possible presidents, one broadly in favour of cosying up to Russia, the other against it. Moldova, where Russian troops squat illegally on a disputed sliver of territory, this week lost a reforming government. Russia still needles Georgia and Azerbaijan and hopes to use a recent outburst of violence in Armenia to exert its influence there too. The West can offer help to these countries, even as it tells the Russians that their conduct in Chechnya is merely losing them influence elsewhere. The western armoury is limited, but the stakes are high: they include not just the suffering of the Chechens but the stability of the Caucasus and, perhaps, of Russia itself.